In the world of online marketing, citations can offer tremendous benefits for your business by exposing your business information to hundreds or thousands of potential customers who may decide to buy your products or services.
A citation refers to any instance where your company information is mentioned, or “cited”, on a website. The more your company’s name, address, phone number and other information is mentioned in popular directories and websites such as Yelp.com, YellowPages.com, and SuperPages.com, the more likely it is that a potential customer will find you online.
Local Business Citations in Yelp
Your company’s online marketing activities should include a disciplined process for getting listed and mentioned in a variety of websites such as local blogs, news websites, social media sites, government sites, and your local Chamber of Commerce site.
Even if a citation only references your company’s name without a link to your website, your company’s online reputation score can benefit. However, the more information included in each citation, the better.
Why Citations Are Good for Your Company
Any time your company information is mentioned or “cited” online, it offers the potential that more people will discover your business and want to know more about your products or services. Online citations give your company potentially valuable exposure to customers that may have previously passed you by, and play a vital role in helping you reach and connect with these potential buyers.
Citations are also play a role in search engine optimization today. Google and other search engines use citations to decide how highly they will rank your business in local search results. The more citations you have, the greater your chances of getting your business to appear higher than competitors for searches with similar or identical keywords. A higher ranking can bring more visitors to your website — and more visitors to your website can lead to more business for you if your website has been designed to convert visitors to prospects and customers.
How Do You Get Citations for Your Business?
Getting citations created for your business is not difficult but it is a tedious and time-consuming task that requires attention to details. Most importantly, you want to make sure that your company’s name, address, phone number, email address and website links are consistently referenced in every place you are mentioned. That means, you must use a consistent format for your address (don’t use Street in some cases and St. in others; don’t use Suite in some places and the # symbol in others, and so on.)
Failure to list your business name, address and phone number (NAP) accurately in directories and websites will confuse the search engines and could cost you lost business. Information in one website has a tendency to be shared and spread to other websites, and the more websites that list your NAP information incorrectly, the more your business will suffer from inaccurate data published in numerous places online.
A citation is most effective when it is accompanied by as much information about your business as possible. Local search experts recommend that every business include its hours of operations, pictures, videos, details about your products and services, and any other information that would be helpful and useful to potential or actual customers.
Herbst Marketing Offers Citation Building Services for Local Businesses
If you would like to know your online citation score, contact us today. We will provide you a detailed report showing how your company information appears online. The report we send you can be used as a guide for creating and updating your company citations yourself. Or, if you do not have the desire or in-house resources to do it yourself, this is a service we provide as well. Contact us for details and a quote.
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